No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) (22 page)

Ebby, from the church’s
children’s ministry, reached out to me by phone after we’d missed several
Sundays. “Hey, lady. Just wanted to make sure my sweet Zoe and Seth are well. I
see that you’ve checked the kids into the system here and there. I keep missing
them, though. Is everything okay?”

“The kids are great,” I eased
her concerns. “I should have called to let you all know why our attendance has
been spotty lately. My husband was diagnosed with Lyme disease.”

She gasped, “Oh my. I’ve
heard it’s awful. Is he getting better?”

“Slowly. He’s trying to stay
away from things that trigger migraines. He has a hard time with loud noises
and those flashing lights the praise dancers sometimes use.”

“I see. Service can get
pretty rowdy,” she said.

“When we miss church, we have
worship service at home whenever Stelson’s up to being our pastor,” I
half-joked with her.

Ebby said in a lowered voice,
“Quiet as it’s kept, that’s where church starts, really. At home. I wish more
parents took time to teach their kids the Word on the couch and around the dinner
table. Would make my job so much easier.”

I couldn’t rightfully say
we’d been as diligent about teaching the Word as Ebby was giving me credit for.
Her insight, however, gave me something else to add to our after-school
schedule: scripture memorization. Now that Seth could read, it was
on
.

Another call came in later
that afternoon, this one from the Tuesday women’s hospitality team.

“Yes, Miss Willie Rose,
everything’s fine. Thank you for asking.”

“Well, the last time you were
here, you sat at table four. The table leader, Hattie, asked me for your phone
number, but we’re not at liberty to give out personal information between
church members without permission.”

Thank God!

 “We’re wondering if you
might join us again this coming Tuesday. Sister Windham will be concluding her
message on spiritual warfare and intercession.”

She’d sold me already, except
I didn’t want to sit at table four again. “Umm…Miss Willie Rose, would it be
possible for me to sit at a different table?”

“I-I suppose so. Do you mind
me asking why you’d like to move?”

Answering her question
directly would mean border-line gossip. “I’d rather not say.”

“Hmph.”

The way she
hmphed
me,
I just knew my special request was going to get back to Hattie. “But on second
thought, stop. Rewind. I don’t want to cause any problems with the way things
are arranged. I’ll stick with my table for now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.” After all I’d
been through with my husband, what could a table of women do to me?

“We’ll see you Tuesday. And I
don’t know if you know this or not, but we extended Mom’s Day Out to five
o’clock.”

“You don’t say?” My soul
cried out Hallelujah! I could have danced like David. “Be there with bells on.
Bye.”

Immediately, I began to dream
up plans for my life between noon and five o’clock. Five whole glorious
child-free, husband-free hours.
What will I do with myself? A massage?
Shopping? Take a nap?

The last option was the only
one I wouldn’t have to consult with Stelson about. Sleep was free. But I could
do that any night. I dialed him at work. “Babe, you know how much you love me,
right?”

“Yeeeeesssss,” he slurred.

“And you know how hard these
past few months have been for me, right?”

“Yeeeeesssss.”

“I’d like to make a budget
adjustment proposal. A massage and facial next week while Zoe is in the church
nursery and Seth is at his piano lesson.”

Without hesitation, he
answered, “Go for it. You deserve it.”

I hung up the phone before he
could ask any questions. And then I went to my prayer closet and praised God.
Not for the upcoming massage but because Stelson’s reaction was…from my
old
Stelson.

My sweet, doting,
even-tempered husband was back again.

Earlier, I’d
thought
about getting my David on. This revelation put the thought into action. I
selected Amber Bullock’s
Lord You’ve Been So Good
from my playlist and
performed an impromptu praise dance for an audience of One.

From the two phone calls in
one day, I gathered there must have been a church-wide thrust to contact
members who had fallen off. We used to call such missions “roundups” at my old
church.

Once, Momma tried to
“roundup” Daddy. He only attended on special occasions, for Jonathan’s or my
sake. Easter and Christmas speeches or skits and choir solos.

“You ain’t got to round me up
to nothing,” I remember Daddy fussing. “Jesus won’t be rounding up half the
folks
doin’
the roundup. Some of ‘em will be looking for a rope to come
their way and they’ll be falling down a hot chute instead.”

My father believed in God in
a general sense. Like, he’d say “I swear before God…” and “I’ll leave that to
the Man upstairs.” But he’d always harbored a severe dislike for church folk
and preachers.

“Jonathan Smith, Sr.” Momma
reserved his whole name for her biggest points. She’d tapped her stirring spoon
on the edge of her pot of greens and set the spoon on its holder. “It ain’t
your place or mine to judge who’s goin’ to heaven or hell. All you can do is
try to walk upright before God. He’ll do the judgin’. I wonder how you’re going
to answer Him when He asks you why, after all He blessed you with, you hardly
ever turned around and gave Him any time.”

Daddy had popped open a can
of soda. Sat down at the table next to me while I peeled potatoes.

“Tell me something,”—I
knew he was setting Momma up then—“when did they start the roundup?”

Momma thought for a second.
“I believe First Lady announced it last week.”

“And when do y’all start the
fundraising for the pastor and his wife’s anniversary?”

Momma narrowed her eyes at
him. “You wrong, Jonathan. Pastor and his wife labor over us. They’re good
shepherds and they deserve to be rewarded.”

“I ain’t sayin’ a man don’t
deserve honest pay for work well done. Mighty funny, though, how some shepherds
don’t go lookin’ for the lost sheep ’til it’s time for the fleecin’.” He tilted
his head back smoothly and gulped his soda.

Momma turned to the dishes in
the sink.

I was too young to comprehend
Daddy’s implications, but I knew he’d said something Momma couldn’t refute entirely.

All she could do was
admonish, “You need to keep your mouth off the mand of God.”

“He ain’t a man-
d
.
He’s a ma-
nnn
, just like me. When church folk stop worshipin’ the
preacher and start doin’ something worth my time, I’ll be there.”

As much as I despised my
father’s attitude about church, I gathered he must have been hurt by someone in
the past. Momma tried her best to protect Jonathan and me from Daddy’s cynicism
without telling us outright that she thought he was foolish. “We gon’ pray for
your Daddy to see the light ‘cause right now, the enemy’s got him blind as a
one-eyed bat.”

I wanted to ask Momma what
difference it made how many eyes a bat had if it was already blind, but I
didn’t want to be accused of talking smart, so I kept my mouth shut.

Even as a child, I knew my
father wasn’t right about a lot of things. I never doubted his love for me and,
later, I grew to appreciate his glass-half-empty perspective because it helped
me understand how to deal with people who had suffered rough childhoods and
life-changing injustices. The fact that he’d been accused of a crime he didn’t
commit, then beaten silly by white police officers to the point that he was
unable to take advantage of his college scholarship—his chance at a
wonderful life—was something for which I had to cut Daddy slack.

Funny thing is, when I got
into my secret place Tuesday morning before the women’s meeting so I could get
my mind right for table four, the Father asked me if I thought I was any better
or worse than my father for not wanting to be around my assigned group?

My first thought was to try
and reason with Him—tell Him exactly why I didn’t want to be around them.
Tell Him how disappointed I was that a group of women older than me had not
encouraged me and lifted me up as I’d hoped. I was even getting ready to flip
to the Psalms and quote David where he said, “I have more understanding than my
elders…”

But I stopped. Didn’t even go
there. Slapped my palms against my forehead and said, “I repent. I receive the
mind of Christ on this matter.” I was too tired and getting too old to sit up
and argue with God anymore. If His ways are good—and they are—why
debate?

By the end of my quiet time
with Him, I realized two things: First, I was the daughter of Jonathan Smith,
Sr. For as much as I deplored his pessimism, there was a streak of it in me,
too. Maybe I could blame Daddy for modeling negativity while I was a child, but
I was forty-two years old now and Christ lived in me. No excuse.

Second, the Lord put me at
table four for
His
purposes. If I thought I knew so much more than my
sisters, it was my responsibility to share His truth, in love, with them no
matter what age they were.
I
was discriminating based on age.

Table four received me as
though Miss Willie Rose hadn’t given a hint of my reluctance to rejoin the
group.
Thank You, Lord.

The order of service had
switched. We had group talk time first. Naturally, they all wanted to know
where I had been, how my husband was.

“He’s improving every day. It
was so hard taking care of him, but God is faithful,” I gave a generic answer.

“Well, you know what the
Bible says,” Janice added, “God won’t put more on us than we can bear.”

“Mmm hmmm,” they all murmured
and nodded.

I tell you, God didn’t bit
more let me get five minutes into the discussion and already I had to speak up
against this misquote of the Word. “Well, you know, my sister,” I tried to dash
a little sweetness on the contradiction, “that scripture…”
How do I say
‘ain’t even in the Bible’ without being disrespectful? Help me, Lord.

“What about it? Been one of
my favorite scriptures all my life,” Beverly chimed in.

 
One of the fellowship facilitators
casually interrupted our discussion. “How’s it going at this table?”

Doris tipped up her hat.
“Good. We were just discussing the verse about how God won’t put more on us
than we can bear.”

“Oh,” the facilitator
laughed, putting a hand on her chest. “I know. People think that’s a
real
scripture!
We’re gonna have to do some Bible drills one of these days.”

The facilitator moseyed on to
the next table.

“What she said,” I shied
away, thankful that the correction had come from someone nearer their age
group.

Doris bucked her eyes.
“Chile, I been quotin’ that scripture all my life. You mean to tell me it ain’t
even in the Bible?”

“No, ma’am,” I answered as
innocently as possible. “God said he wouldn’t put more
temptation
on us
than we can bear. Not more
troubles
or
problems
. I mean, if we
could bear everything that happens to us, we wouldn’t need Him.”

Hattie threw her coffee
napkin on the table and gasped, “Shut your mouth!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, what other scriptures
you know of that we need to revisit?” Hattie asked, pulling her Bible closer.

I snatched my phone from my
purse and tapped a browser open. “There’s a website. I’ll go to it now.”

My tablemates waited in
anticipation, still awestruck about the revelation. Of course, once the site
loaded, I gave them more. “Here’s one. The race is not given to the swift or
the strong, but to the one who endureth until the end.”

“You got to be kiddin’ me! We
used to sing that song in the church choir!” Linda slapped the table.

“The verse is actually a
mixture of Ecclesiastes 9:11 and Matthew 24:13. When you really think about it,
the verse
can’t
be true. The race is given to those who believe on
Christ as Savior—not those who put forth the most effort the longest,
right?”

Hattie’s posture stiffened.
“I’mma tell Willie Rose about you. You need to teach us a class or two next
semester.”

My mind said “oh, no” but a
bell rang loudly in my Spirit.
Me teach a Bible class?
I couldn’t see
it. I begged the Lord to just give me one new task at a time. Please.

We all donated to the pot for
the farewell offering to Sister Windham. Once again, she delivered more words
of wisdom than I could capture with a pen and paper. I wished I hadn’t been so
condescending with my seasoned sisters. By judging them, I’d missed out on the
blessing of hearing Sister Windham teach.